Rebecca Geiger said: “Hey I was thinking about another idea for a post. Perhaps you could cover how to use tags properly and how they are used as a search on your blog?”

Well, Rebecca, that’s a killer idea for a blog post but I have a confession…
I tag everything in site, well everything on this web site that is. I don’t go around tagging people’s walls with “JB Wuzz Here, dudez.”

But I do tag everything I post.

What Is A “Tag” Anyway?

Without getting all “techno monkey” on you, a “tag” is basically a keyword that WordPress uses to search your site. I think it’s easy to think of them that way because Google sorta treats them like keywords too - so they help your SEO

They Also Help Your Readers…

“Tags” help your readers move around your blog too. They keep everything nice and tidy, so your readers can find related content at the click of a mouse. Pretty spiffy.

Plus, They Help Your Widgets…

Some plugins like the “Related Posts” plugin you see at the bottom of this article won’t even work unless you “tag” your content. So that’s something to keep in mind too.

How Many “Tags” Should You Use On Your Blog Posts?

In my humble opinion, no more than five and way less than ten.

Because WordPress (by some sorcery I don’t understand) duplicates your posts when you tag them. And it’s a scientifically validated fact that Google sends flying code monkeys after anybody who posts duplicate content.

Gremlin Tags…

Now, if that didn’t scare you away from using tags ever again, here’s more funky “Gremlin rules” - remember that movie? Don’t feed them after midnight, and don’t get them wet…

Anyway, I’m getting off topic, but here’s the rules.

You must use tags more than once.

So if I tagged this post with the word “Gremlins” and never wrote another post about Gremlins – that’s a very bad idea.

I won’t get into the logistics here, but just take my word for it, because duplicate content will start popping up like Gremlins who ate after midnight while taking a bath..

So build a list of tags you’re going to use on your blog and stick to those tags.

My last words…

Maybe you’re like me, I used to write a tag for everything. I didn’t know how bad that was for SEO. Don’t make my mistake.

I’m still trying to kill the gremlin tags.

Tweet soon,

Jason The “Better Networker”
The Jason Better Blog

P.S. Please Retweet - “Yes, Jason I love this post and I’m going to “retweet” it for my Twitter followers by clicking the little green “retweet” button on the top of this post right now.”

I’m so glad that you covered this. This has been something I honestly was doing. I was tagging everything. Especially when using plugins that will select a bunch of tags for you. So you clear it up…Keep it at 5!

Good question. I tend to use 5 keywords per post (some overlap my main silo keywords on my website). I use they keywords as:
a. tags for a post,
b. keywords (when using the “All in One SEO Pack” plugin).
c. as categories on my blog (where possible)

I bet a lot of readers are going into a panic right now. I have some solutions that may help.

First, download the plugin “home page excerpts”.
This will keep your home page blog roll from showing up full posts. Jason uses something similar with “read more”. If you don’t want to add the “read more” to the html, use the plugin.

Set your categories to use excerts or teasers.

This should also work for the archives. Alternatively you can go to theme editor and change the archive.php from content to excerpt.

You can also use the “advanced excerpt” plugin.

As for tags I think the “template tags/the excerpt” plugin will work but I haven’t checked it out.

Another great post! Man I’ve seen a few blogs out there that have committed the sin of using ‘Gremlin tags’—The dreaded tag cloud covered in a long list of un-used tags..

By the way, certain plugins offer support to convert catagories and other meta-data to tags, what are your thoughts on using this approach and how would you recommend using them if your blog contains a lot of them?

Thanks for the awesome information. One of these weeks I am going to have to chase down all my gremlin tags too, while I am at it I might as well go ahead and put my posts into silos, this should only take me about a week if I stop everything and concentrate on this…You gave me one more reason to consider doing it though!

Okay, Okay… Your message is beginning to come in loud and clear. All these minor details, which are actually quite major, contribute to the outcome of online marketing. This awesome, Jason! Oh, and thanks for not boring us with all the technical stuff!

Hey jason! I’m still learning about blogs, So not real sure about tags, I’m wondering the difference be tween wordpress. org and wordpress .com! I know .com is free but now I’m hearing that the free site is as good or just like the paid site! Why would I want to keep paying for a hosted site!

The reason you don’t want to use their free service is
the restrictions they place on your site. I mean, do you
really want to put the future of your online business in the
hands of somebody else’s rules?

I would be terrified…

Hosting your own wordpress site gives you complete control
over everything and you get the awesome perks that come with
controlling or hosting multiple domain names and having a
bunch of storage space for videos, pictures, or whatever else
you want on your site.

Plus, most hosting sites are dirt cheap. It’s almost a matter of
preference when it comes down to it, because there’s so many
decent webhosts out there.

Thanks for the comments about tags. I really need to learn more about all the techno-internet stuff.
If anyone doesn’t have a blog yet, they’re a great way to build a biz. I found a group of guys who will build on for free and download a bunch of the best widgets for you too.

Thanks for the advice. I’m still getting to grips with WordPress after moving across from static pages that I created on Dreamweaver.

I had a site that had several posts on page 1 of Google. Making some decent commissions…

and then…

I added a heap of tags to each post. BIG MISTAKE. My posts went down to around 500 on Google therefore losing all of my commissions. BOO HOO. I have now trimmed down the tags to 2 to 3 to each post now.

On my Google webmasters account, the internal links are up the creak, dispersing page rage all over the place. I am trying to find a way to the get the tags de-indexed on Google but I don’t think it’s that easy. I have blocked the Google robots from crawling my indexed tags too.

I HOPE that over time Google will not crawl the old tags now and my site will rise again.

Finally, a great post on tags. I always wondered how they should be used. Now I have the knowledge to continue blogging. How bout not using any tags at all? Would that hurt, enhance or do nothing to SEO?

Hi Jason! Just come across your post following bad ratings in google with lots of tag errors on my site blog! I was using 30+ tags and often they weren’t specific to a mention in the post! Think that may be why I am flat-lining?